[WSIS CS-Plenary] Open-access proposal for the A2K treaty

[Pablo Accuosto]

hi,

below i am forwarding this email about the "open archives initiative", sent
by peter suber to a mailing list that is discussing wipo's proposed "access
to knowledge" treaty (http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/a2k/)

regards,

pablo

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Suber" <peters at earlham.edu>
To: <a2k at lists.essential.org>; <SPARC-OAForum at arl.org>;
<boai-forum at ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Sent: Sunday, January 23, 2005 10:02 PM
Subject: [A2k] Open-access proposal for the a2k treaty


> Colleagues,
>
> I propose the following provisions for the Access to Knowledge
> Treaty.  Their purpose is to promote open access to scientific and
> scholarly research literature.
>
> * Signatory nations should put an open-access condition on publicly-funded
> research grants.  By accepting a grant, the grantee agrees to provide open
> access (OA) to any publications that result from the funded research.
>
> The funding agency should give the grantee a choice of methods for
> providing OA to the resulting publications.  Grantees should be able to
> choose between OA journals and OA archives (also called OA
> repositories).  The OA archives should meet certain conditions of
> accessibility, interoperability, and long-term preservation.  The
> interoperability condition could be satisfied by complying with the
> metadata harvesting protocol of the Open Archives Initiative
> <http://www.openarchives.org/>.  Qualifying archives need not be hosted by
> the government; they could, for example, be hosted and maintained by
> universities.
>
> If the grantee chooses to publish in an OA journal that charges an upfront
> processing fee on accepted articles, then the funding agency will agree to
> pay the fee.
>
> The OA condition on research grants could make reasonable exceptions, for
> example, for classified military research, for patentable discoveries, and
> for works that generate revenue for the author such as books.
>
> * Signatory nations should provide funds and technical assistance for all
> universities and research centers in the country to set up and maintain
> their own OA repositories.  One condition of government assistance should
> be that the institution adopt a policy to encourage or require its
> researchers to deposit their research output in the repository.  Again,
> the
> policy could recognize reasonable exceptions.
>
> * Signatory nations should provide funds and technical assistance for
> digitizing and providing open access to the nation's cultural heritage.
>
> * Signatory nations should sign the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to
> Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.
> http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html
>
> I may suggest other recommendations in the coming weeks.
>
> -----
>
> For further reading, see the following:
>
> Open Access Overview
> http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm
> (An introduction to OA for those who are new to the concept.)
>
> Timeline of Open Access
> http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm
> (A brief history to show what has been done in this area and to answer
> objections that OA is new, untried, or radical.)
>
> Scientific Publications:  Free for All?
>
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/3990
2.htm
> (The exemplary July 2004 report of the UK House of Commons Science and
> Technology Committee; all nations signing the a2k treaty should consider
> the 82 recommendations in this report; by contrast, these nations should
> *not* follow the much-weakened policy of the US National Institutes of
> Health.)
>
>      Thank you taking up this important topic,
>      Peter Suber
>
>
>
>
> ----------
> Peter Suber
> Open Access Project Director, Public Knowledge
> Research Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College
> Author, SPARC Open Access Newsletter
> Editor, Open Access News blog
> http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/
> peter.suber at earlham.edu
>